Tributes paid to Southport Talking Newspaper volunteer

TRIBUTES have been paid to a Southport man who provided a crucial service for the town’s partially sighted.

Tom Ball,aged 89, had been a leader of the team producing Southport Talking Newspaper, a service which provides free weekly audio tapes of local news to blind and partially-sighted people in Southport, Formby and Ormskirk.

Geoff Williams, chairman of Southport Talking Newspaper, said: “Tom retired from STN about five years ago for health reasons, but I am sure many of our older volunteers and listeners will remember him with deep affection.”

Southport-born Mr Ball had a distinguished career as a chartered accountant after spending his war years serving in the Royal Air Force, training radio operators in Canada.

Mr Williams said: “I introduced Tom to the STN shortly after its formation in 1987 and he became an enthusiastic and popular reading team member before representing all four reading teams on the committee for many years.”

The service has grown from covering five to 30 care homes across Southport, with volunteers picking out the most interesting pieces of news in the newspapers that week and making recordings of them which are then posted to the homes.

They are listened to by the blind, as well as patients who struggle to hold newspapers, such as MS and stroke sufferers.

The charity has no official funding, but gets free postage from the Royal Mail to send out the newspaper recordings on memory sticks.

Mr Ball passed away on October 30. A service of celebration was held on November 8 at Southport Crematorium, followed by an event at Royal Birkdale Golf Club, where the keen golfer and snooker player was a member for many years.

Mr Williams also paid tribute to the care his friend had received at Birch Abbey Nursing Home and Southport hospital while suffering from pneumonia